Momentum
by ninja-v
Summary: Shepard took the leap willingly to end the Reaper War once and for all, but instead she was awakened in a foreign world, forced to fight a whole different war.
1. Prologue

**0.**

_"Hurtled into chaos, you fight... and the world will shake before you."_

-Flemeth, 9:30 Dragon Age

* * *

Shepard looked down to the luminescent projection of the Catalyst unflinchingly as the AI explained to her what choices she had. Destroy the Reapers, control the Reapers, or generate a synthesis to fuse the organics and synthetics. She would die, said the Catalyst solemnly.

If breathing had not been hard enough, Shepard would have laughed. Instead, she opted to grin lopsidedly at the AI's avatar. "Of course I would die."

The Catalyst tilted the head of its avatar. "You do not seem to fear the end of your survival."

"I fear a lot of things," answered Shepard, limping forward, "but no, I don't suppose I fear dying."

She looked at the towering beam—the best choice, though still imperfect—then down at the edge of the precipice. She turned around, facing the Catalyst. "In fact, I am looking forward to it."

Shepard closed her eyes. One last breath, then—_meet you at the bar_—she fell backwards.

* * *

It was raining.

The trickles of water dropped on her face, her hair, her arms, seeped through the absorbent material of her under-armor. The fabric clung to her skin. _Has it been raining for long?_

Shepard opened her eyes, slowly, and water trickled down to her eyes. She blinked several times before her eyes were cleared, then she noticed something.

She was in a forest. Which forest, she could not tell—she would check her omni-tool nav app, but her arms felt so heavy. Her whole body felt like that one time she made the mistake to have a full contact spar with Grunt. The brat was worse than Wrex; unlike the latter, Grunt had no idea what restraint meant.

With a groan, Shepard tried to dig her elbow down to the muddy forest floor and push herself up, but she barely lifted her back several inches before falling down again with an unceremonious squelch. No, it did not seem like she would leave the forest anytime soon. She sighed. Why could dying not be a little bit easier? She had thought dying at the Crucible would be a good ending, if a bit heroic and dramatic for her tastes. Dying a slow, painful death on a garden planet she somehow found herself in, on the other hand, was not nearly such. Garrus would have called it less stylish.

Shepard choked back a dry sob.

Slowly, she rolled to her side and curled up as tightly as her aching body allowed her. At least now the rain would not fall on her face. Her fingers felt numb, cold. Soon, she thought, and let her thought linger no further.

* * *

Footfalls. Fast, brisk.

"Mother, I think you would like to take a look at this."

Fingers, light at first, then firm and methodical. A touch on her neck, then skimming on her temple, and last pushing her body to lay flat. It was no longer raining.

Someone else was coming, the steps more deliberate than the first. She wanted to turn, to see, but her body refused to comply. A hand pushed back her hair from her face, different than the first.

A low chuckle. "Well, well, what have we here?"

* * *

.

**A/N:** Andaran Atish'an! Perhaps this plot is overused (I have seen several with similar premise), but I hope to at least make this different. While it will follow the major storyline of Dragon Age: Origins, it might not be a precisely by-the-book retelling, considering this is Shepard and not the playable warden we usually get. This is still a prologue (hence the brevity), but I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me what you think so far.


	2. Chapter 1

**1.**

_"After time adrift among open stars, along tides of light and through shoals of dust, I will return to where I began."_

-Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, 2185 CE

* * *

Awareness slipped gradually as Shepard woke. She first felt the comfortable weight of a blanket on her, then the aroma of onion and broth mixed with the faint hint of damp lichen, and last, the sounds of someone cooking. She stirred and opened her eyes cautiously. To her relief, the light was dim, pulsating from a fireplace in the corner of the room where a person was evidently cooking.

A fireplace. The sight was odd, archaic. People simply did not use fireplaces anymore. Even stoves with actual flames were rare to be found, except in planets with a suitable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. In ships, space stations, and colonies in less prolific worlds, air was continuously recycled and regulated, thus a restricted commodity. Flames were not only fire hazard (and potentially explosive, should it be handled wrong), they also wasted precious oxygen and fuel. People nowadays mostly cooked with electric ovens and heat stoves.

She had heard, of course, that some people on Earth insisted on isolating themselves from the modern world and its technological advances, instead living in wooden structures in areas close to wilderness. Over the years, however, especially since the First Contact War, a lot of these communities either dispersed or simply died slowly. The ones that survived only went to isolate themselves deeper, further away from view in fear of the aliens.

Maybe that was where she was: a xenophobic, technologically-backwards village on Earth.

_Crap._

Shepard sat up and the blanket fell from her shoulders, pooling at her waist. She was naked, she realized belatedly.

She was also completely healed. Exactly how, she was not sure, but clearly it could not be just Cerberus' implants and cybernetics. Bruises and minor cuts might have healed overnight. What Shepard had, however, were not just some injuries obtained after a fistfight with a brute. She was sure she had at least internal bleeding and bruising due to Harbinger's firepower, the shrapnel said firepower had created and embedded in her flesh, and wounds caused by the subsequent blast of a galaxy-wide weapon mounted on the biggest space station ever existed.

Even a half-cyborg like her should have died.

The person in front of the fireplace turned towards her. An old woman, wearing a drab dress that looked like a prop for a medieval peasant in one of those fantasy vids. Her hair was gray and wiry, her skin mottled by spots, but her gait was strong and her posture straight. "You are awake," she said, "good."

The woman pressed a tin cup into Shepard's hands. The water smelled bad—as she drank it, she found that it tasted worse. Shepard tried not to think about what Mordin would have said about contamination and infection. Or worse, how Tali would have reacted. She had never had to test it, but she hoped Cerberus' body immunity implant covered whatever the water had, because she was too thirsty to be picky.

"Where am I?" she asked in Galactic after draining the cup.

"Far away from home," answered the old woman with a grin, "but you are aware of that already."

It took Shepard exactly two seconds before she realized that the old lady had answered her question _in English_.

The woman understood Galactic, but chose to speak English. Maybe she really was in a xenophobic village somewhere on Earth. But why would a xenophobe bother to learn Galactic? Cautiously in English, Shepard said, "You understand Galactic."

"Ah, is that was the tongue was called? When you are as old as I am, some questions sound the same no matter what language they are spoken in." She took the empty tin cup from Shepard and handed her a chipped porcelain bowl filled with some kind of soup. "And you speak the Common Tongue, lost one. How curious."

"The Common Tongue? I—where am I, exactly?"

"My hut. The Korcari Wilds. Ferelden. Thedas. I doubt these are the answers you were looking for."

"Far away from home," Shepard echoed weakly.

"Indeed you are."

Shepard drank the soup—onion and broth, scalding her tongue but not unwelcome—and went back to sleep, tired in more ways than one.

* * *

When Shepard was back awake the hut was empty, the fire out. Beams of sunlight streamed through a solitary window by the door. Some sort of garment was folded on a stool by the bed; when she unfolded it, she found it to be a thin gray shift, a string to fasten it on the waist. She put it on, and just as she was knotting the string on her waist, the door opened and a young woman walked in with a basket swinging from her elbow.

"Ah," the woman said, although she did not look surprised at all. "Mother did say you were awake before, but this is fast recovery even for her skills."

Shepard cleared her throat. "I've heard that before. That I heal fast, I mean."

"Clearly," she answered. The woman took her in again, and Shepard felt a bit exposed despite being more covered. She was wearing little, almost enough to rival Jack's state of undress. Her eyelids were heavily-lidded and painted purple, echoing the shade of her lips and top. Her iris looked uncannily like a nocturnal animal, golden yellow and sharp—maybe that was why—as she contemplated Shepard like a person might contemplate an interesting natural phenomenon.

Shepard cleared her throat again and crossed her arms. "So," she said, "mother?"

"Yes," the woman responded, "mother. The old woman who tended your wounds before is Flemeth. My mother."

"Isn't she a bit…"

"Old? Maybe. 'Tis no matter if I was not born from her womb; she raised me as her daughter, and so she is mother."

"I see."

The woman apparently took this as the end of their conversation. She walked across the room towards the fireplace and set her basket by it. She took out an assortment of plants, tubers, and fruits, methodically sorting and washing them in a bucket of water. Meanwhile, Shepard fidgeted on the spot, wringing her wrists. Then after a while, she blurted, "Can I use your toilet?"

"My _what_?"

"Toilet." Shepard paused. "Restroom? Water closet? Lavatory? Washroom? Somewhere I can relieve myself and preferably wash up?"

"Ah. The privy is out that door, to the left, by the lake."

Fresh air greeted her as soon as she exited the hut—a welcome feeling—and she took a look around. What the old woman's daughter had called lake turned out to be a murky body of water more resembling a marsh than an actual lake. Vegetation surrounded the area, taller trees marking the perimeter. No other houses or huts, not even a dirt road leading somewhere through the forest. Ancient towering ruins—pillars and broken archways—stood far in the distance as a lonely landmark.

And by the marsh, a little bit to the left, was a wooden structure not much bigger than a shower stall.

The concept of a separate building for only a toilet was completely lost on Shepard, but upon nearing the outhouse she began to understand. The thing reeked—not as bad as it would have been if placed indoors, but enough to trigger a gag reflex—even with its door closed. She could hazard a guess on what was beyond the door; years ago, she went through one week of survival training in boot camp and they were forced to make do with what they had. She held her breath, placed a hand on the door, and pushed.

A barrel of fresh water (please, please be rainwater, she thought) was placed on loose wooden planks that serve as a floor, the gaps between allowing water to drain off. Beside it was a deep hole from which the smell came from. She pushed down the urge to gag.

Shepard finished her business as quickly as possible. She paused at the sight of the hut; it was taller and bigger from the outside, the shape of it indicating the presence of a second floor and even possibly an attic. Odd. She did not notice any door or stairways leading up from the room she had been staying in. No ladders or stairs leaning from the outside of the hut, either. Or maybe she simply missed it, in the middle of her sleeping and waking and meeting strange cultists (they had to be cultists, the way they were dressed and lived) in an odd garden world with a history of ancient civilization?

The hut's front door creaked when she opened it. For the first time, Shepard actually took in the room. Two beds, one fireplace—bottles and phials littered the mantelpiece—with dying embers, fur pelts here and there, a makeshift table made of a plank supported by two barrels. A bookshelf sat in the corner with more books it could handle, some big and some small, most bound in leather and tough book spines, several manuscripts lay bare. No door to secret second floor.

She stood there, facing the room, trying to make sense of the hut and its inhabitants, to place it in the world she knew, and failing.

The woman turned and regarded her with a questioning look. Shepard licked her lips. "When I… was there… do you still have my things with you?"

She pointed to a crate sitting in the corner. Shepard stood on the wooden floor, cross-legged, and started taking out the things inside. There were only a few items in the crate. She took out the item at the very top: her M-3 Predator. The heavy pistol was battered, but it survived—just as it was the only weapon that survived the blast of a Reaper shot back in London. Its weight was familiar in her hand as she turned it and checked the heat sink to see how many shots she had left.

Nine.

And of course, Harbinger just had to fry her armor along with all the spare heat sinks she had. Shepard put the pistol aside. She clenched her hand, unclenched it, and—

—a small singularity, too small to actually affect anything, floated over her palm.

Shepard breathed a sigh of relief. If she did not have problems controlling her biotics, her implants and bio-amp should be intact. At the very least she would not be rendered defenseless. She really should thank Cerberus for the L5n sometime.

Next she took out a bundle of fabric, which turned out to be her under-armor as she opened it. It reeked of sweat and spoiled water, the cloth caked with mud and blood and burnt in several places. From its tattered state, it was clear that her rescuers had to cut the suit off her. Shepard turned an oddly-textured part and immediately regretted it upon finding part of what must have been her skin sticking and melded into one with the suit material. Bile rose to her mouth.

"Hey," Shepard called weakly.

"Yes?"

"Were you the one who found me?" she asked, her hands still clutching the remnants of her under-armor.

"Yes, and then I called Flemeth." Shepard heard the woman rose from where she was sitting, and soon a shadow was cast over her hunching figure. "I had to rip that thing off your body before Flemeth could start healing you."

"Thank you…" Shepard trailed away.

"Morrigan. And what are you called?"

"My name's Shepard. Thank you, Morrigan."

Morrigan's shadow stilled and Shepard turned to see that the younger woman was standing close-mouthed with an odd expression on her face. "What Flemeth does is never out of the goodness of her heart. She saved you for a purpose, though I could not fathom _what_," she said tersely.

Shepard blinked a few times and then shrugged. "I used to wish people would just help me, no strings attached, but that's as far as wishful thinking goes." Not that she asked for help this time around. The first time she died she had been grateful for Cerberus' reconstruction, dodgy agendas notwithstanding. This time she had been so ready to make the leap—figuratively and literally, in her case—and yet she was awakened in a foreign world, rescued by an old lady with a suspicious plan. She was not sure how to feel about being denied death, but thanking the person saving you was just what people should do.

"You do not know my mother. Otherwise, you would not be so calm."

"Should I know her?" asked Shepard, attention already back on her under-armor. She examined the back plating that covered the medi-gel dispenser and shields generator. The shields generator was most likely fried, but maybe she could still salvage some medi-gel. She reached inside the crate and smiled; the switchblade she usually kept in her boot was still there.

"You are not from this world. 'Tis understandable." Morrigan was now crouching beside Shepard, observing as she tried to pry the plating open with the switchblade. "In Ferelden, Flemeth is known as the Witch of the Wilds. They scare their children with tales of her."

_Crack. _The plating was off, and it was as Shepard had predicted. The shields generator was definitely busted—_ah well, I can always make my own barrier_—but the there was still some medi-gel left. She managed to liberate two tubes of medi-gel despite the dented dispenser cylinder where they were stored. "Those tales can't all be true," said Shepard as she put aside the tubes of medi-gel carefully beside her pistol and switchblade. Applied conventionally, the two tubes were not much, but better than none.

"No, not all. For one, my mother does not actually consume children as snacks." Morrigan's nose wrinkled in disgust.

Shepard did not know what to make of this. "And the witch part?"

"Mother uses magic. 'Tis true enough."

Shepard was about to reach in the crate to grab her boots, but froze. She looked at Morrigan levelly. "Magic isn't real."

"Do not be foolish, Shepard. How else did you think my mother healed you?" To illustrate her point, Morrigan put up a hand and much like how Shepard held a singularity earlier, she held in her palm red flickers of fire.

Whatever denial Shepard was about to stutter died on her tongue. That was not biotics… was it? As far as her knowledge went—and that was far enough, considering her N7 training when she honed her skills—biotics could not generate fire. Biotic individuals could manipulate mass effect field to various effect, some of which might trigger a spark, but not generate fire just like that. What other explanation did she have? Morrigan did not seem to have activated an incinerate command; no, Morrigan did not even own an omni-tool and considering how she lived, she might not even know what an omni-tool was.

Unsure of how to react, she instead said, half joking, "And I suppose you also have dragons and elves and dwarves?"

"For one who do not belong here, 'tis surprising how knowledgeable you are."

"Fairies?"

Morrigan frowned. "Fairies only exist in the imagination of foolish children. 'Tis why they call it fairy tales, after all."

Shepard's mouth twitched. "Of course. How silly of me." She slumped, one hand pinching the bridge of her nose. This was making even less sense by the minute.

"From how you reacted earlier, I assume magic does not exist in your world?"

Shepard shook her head. "Only in stories. Hell, if you go to a bookstore in any city there would be an entire section dedicated for elaborate magical adventures." She took out her boots from the crate before dumping them back in—just like the under-armor, the boots had to be cut off from her feet. Even if they had not been so damaged, the magnetic soles would be impractical unless she was planning to go somewhere with zero G. "So… what world is this?"

"Thedas. You are in the south of a country called Ferelden, in a forest called the Korcari Wilds."

Sighing, Shepard shook her head as she reached in the crate again and took out the last item in it: her omni-tool. "I mean," she said as she strapped the omni-tool on her left forearm, "is where this world is. What system? Which cluster?" She turned the omni-tool on, and the orange holographic display flickered for a few seconds before stabilizing.

_[SYSTEM ERROR: CANNOT LOCATE POSITION]_

_[SYSTEM ERROR: NO RADIO FREQUENCY DETECTED. COMMUNICATION SYSTEM INACCESSIBLE]_

_[SYSTEM ERROR: NO EXTRANET SIGNAL DETECTED. CANNOT RETRIEVE MESSAGES]_

_[SYSTEM ERROR: SCANNING SENSORS OFFLINE]_

_[SYSTEM ERROR: REPAIR AND FABRICATION MODULE HARDWARE DAMAGED]_

Shepard muttered a particularly vile Quarian curse and upon the look on Morrigan's face she supplied, "This isn't magic. It's technology. A device."

Morrigan watched as Shepard checked the omni-tool's functions, fingers flitting on the display. "I do not see what you mean by system and cluster."

"What star system and cluster you are—right. Well." Shepard pulled out a galaxy map, projecting it big enough between them. The usual blue dot usually blinking to indicate her position was absent, the diagnostics screen still obnoxiously projecting the various error messages. About the only thing the omni-tool could still do was accessing its own data storage. "I can't get any signal whatsoever from here, not extranet, no radio, nothing. So I think we're somewhere far from the Traverse, maybe in the Terminus, and that's why the signal either doesn't reach here or I'm unauthorized to access it." Shepard zoomed in the map to highlight the known clusters in the Terminus Systems. "I've never heard of a planet called Thedas in the Terminus, though, and I should know. I spent a year in the Terminus."

"Wait," Morrigan said, "I do not think Thedas is there."

"Not in the Terminus?"

She shook her head. "No, I do not think it is there in your map—fascinating as it is."

"_What?_"

Morrigan stood and walked towards the bookshelf, picking up books and removing piles until she returned with her arms full of scrolls. She dumped them on the floor before picking one and opening it. "This is a—"

"Star chart," Shepard said. "I know. But that means we have to match the constellations with the star chart of every damn garden planet in the galaxy."

"The point is that I do not think there will be any matches," Morrigan said. "Think. This world does not work the way yours does. 'Tis not a mere matter of distance. You said it yourself that there are magic and creatures in Thedas that do not exist in your world. Accept it, Shepard, you are far away—"

"No. No. You see, nearly thirty years ago humanity discovered that in the galaxy there are other creatures, other races, if you will, who do not even look human. And if they are there, and you are here, very much human, speaking in human language, then there must be a meeting point. I got here somehow. A link. There has to be one." Shepard thought about the prothean ruin in Eletania and the vision it gave her. A link from the Protheans to the past of humanity existed, there in Eletania, so surely there was a link between this Thedas and Earth? She pulled the star chart closer and began comparing it with Ilos' constellations.

Morrigan stood. "If you wish to waste your time, 'tis not of my concern," she said. "Mother will be home soon. Maybe she would be able to knock some sense in your head."

Shepard ignored her.

Nine bullets, two tubes of medi-gel, and an almost useless omni-tool were all she had.

_I've faced worse odds_, she assured herself. Her fingers trembled as she straightened the curling parchment of the star chart.

_I'll find that link, and I'll find a way back._

* * *

.

**A/N: **And this is chapter one. To answer Raven the Blood Witch, I think now it's clear enough that the timeline takes place during the Fifth Blight. Extra cookies for frozendude for identifying the two people who found Shepard. Do tell me what you think of this chapter, I like knowing what people think. :3

EDITED: some minor errors. Yep.


	3. Chapter 2

**2.**

_"You know, this outdoors thing is growing on me. Like a tumor."_

-Varic Tethras, 9:31 Dragon Age

* * *

Night fell and the interior of the hut reverted into its dim state, the only lights coming from the fireplace and Shepard's omni-tool. Morrigan absolutely refused to talk to Shepard, other than to remind her that "'tis a waste of breath" to "indulge in this foolish hopeless study" of hers. Since then, Shepard opted to try and figure out things herself. Since Morrigan only gave her a withering glare when Shepard asked her how long one day lasted in Thedas, what she had was now an approximation that she calculated from how long it took from around mid-day (her trip to the despicable outhouse) to sunset, with the assumption that—considering the weather seemed relatively mild and stable—the length of day and night was equal. The number she gleaned from the rudimentary calculation was very close to one Earth day. That way, she could eliminate Mindoir and several other garden planets with distinctly different rotation period from her list.

The list was still obnoxiously long. Dozens, and those were only the named and surveyed planets. There was a high chance that Thedas was not listed, uncharted, completely off the map.

There was also that little nagging feeling that Morrigan was _perhaps_ right. Not that Shepard would admit it anytime soon. She did not want it to be true, that one possibility in which geographical distance was not her biggest problem. Her position was depressing enough as it is without throwing something like "alternate universe" or "wormhole", or hell, "magical portal" into the equation.

Shepard was so ready to rip the star chart into shreds of parchments when Flemeth entered the hut, took a look at her, and said very bluntly, "A fool's endeavor."

"I warned her, mother, yet she persisted," Morrigan said with undisguised annoyance.

Shepard's fingers twitched and she shut down the galaxy map, rendering the room a little dimmer than before. "And does the Witch of The Wilds have a better explanation? _Magic_, maybe?"

"Your stars and papers do not hold the answers you seek. You are different. Others with the same spark as yours died the day you arrived. Murdered by their kin and allies. Trapped in the reality of their lives. Killed by their own curiosity. Fallen to temptation. Yet you are here, and you do not belong." Flemeth's eyes narrowed, the iris molten lava in the glow of the fireplace. Shepard crossed her arms—a shiver ran up her spine.

"I don't know what the hell you mean." A half-lie. Shepard knew she did not belong, knew she should have died, knew she survived nonetheless. As for the deaths, Shepard had learned not to blame herself for deaths not caused by her own hands. Ashley taught her that, with many others before and after her. If it was not her fault in Virmire, then these allegedly dead strangers were not hers either.

"People rarely do," said another voice. Morrigan's voice.

Shepard turned her gaze abruptly and realized, belatedly, that the other witch was still in the room—had never left, in fact—and that all this time her presence was overshadowed by her mother. Shepard lifted her chin and asked, "So I don't belong. Why save me?"

Flemeth barked a laugh. "Because no one saved _them_."

Somehow, Shepard felt that it was all the answer she was ever going to get from Flemeth.

* * *

"Shepard. _Shepard_."

Military habit kicked in and Shepard sat upright, snapping, "Status report."

Morrigan—Shepard had to rely on Cerberus' ocular cybernetics fully for that bit of recognition, it was nearly pitch-black—looked at her as if she was crazy.

_Maybe I am, and this crazy witch hut is a hallucination of the clearly delusional Spectre. _Shepard rubbed one eye with the back of her hand. The fire had died out—embers remained, pulsating slightly but barely providing any illumination. "What is it, Morrigan?"

"Come, we are going."

"Where? Why?"

Morrigan did not answer and instead pushed a pile of things into her arms—leather, she thought as the material touched her skin—and said, "I shall explain later. 'Tis a long way, and I wish to be back by nightfall. You may change into that and wash yourself—quickly."

Shepard bristled. "What—no. Tell me what's going on."

"Must you be so impossible?"

Shepard gave Morrigan her best Commander Stare. "Only if you insist to be."

"Very well, then. Mother is sending us for an errand."

"And I have to go why?"

"You do not. You may sit here and persist in your foolish efforts with the star charts, or you could come and perhaps learn something about this world. Mother may wish you would come, but I certainly am capable to do the errand by myself and spend less time in the travel."

While Shepard entertained the idea of petulantly spiting Morrigan and refusing to go with her, she was quite honestly sick of the hut. Her joints ached after spending so much time poring over the star charts until she still saw the chart and galaxy map even when she closed her eyes. The bed was made of straw, and although during her recuperation she slept like a log, last night she felt her skin itch due to the individual straws poking through the sheets and her shift. The resulting sleep was therefore interrupted by her tossing and turning, and right now she could really use some stretching.

"Fine," she groaned. "Just gimme a sec while I change."

Morrigan made an indignant sort of sound and Shepard crawled, half-blind, towards the door. She groped for the handle, and once her fingers closed on the metal knob—_damn, that's freezing_—she opened the door and exited the hut.

Mist hung in the morning air. Between that, the faint light of a sun about to rise, and the ruins in the distance, the atmosphere was almost ominous. Shepard made her way towards the outhouse bare-footed. The mud was slippery and cold under her feet and her thin shift was barely any protection against the mist.

As she reached the outhouse she noticed that there was a new barrel, upturned, beside the barrel of water. A nearly burnt-out candle was placed by the edge, leaving the surface mostly free. Shepard placed the pile of leather things there before stripping bare. Then she realized she had gone to sleep with her omni-tool still strapped to her arm, so she unlatched it and placed it on top of the leather and her shift. She washed—no, splashed water was the more appropriate term—hurriedly. What she would not give for a hot shower, preferably with Garrus.

Shepard took a shuddering breath, only partially caused by the cold. _That option's out. For more reasons than one. Focus._

She wiped herself dry with the shift. Gross, but there was no other choice and it was not like she ever got the shift too dirty. Then, she strapped her omni-tool back on before taking a good look at the pile of leather.

On top was a sleeveless tunic—or armor, considering the studded, hardened leather and the tough shoulder guards—of roughly her size. It took a while until she could figure out how to put the thing on; the mechanism included hidden leather strings and buckles that kept the thing together and could be adjusted to fit her properly. Next was a pair of leather leggings that fortunately was less complex than the tunic. Last was a pair of boots, also leather, and a pair of fingerless leather gloves.

Morrigan was waiting with a pair of long daggers when Shepard returned. "Nice blades," she said.

"They are not for me. They are for you to use, and I hope you know how to wield them."

Shepard frowned. "Expecting trouble?"

Morrigan shifted her gaze, only slightly. "The Korcari Wilds is called such for a good enough reason."

"Okay," Shepard said carefully. Somehow she suspected that wild beasts would be the least of their problems. She took the daggers and put on the leather straps that bound the sheaths, so that they were properly fastened on her back. The weight was slightly lighter than her usual heavy weapon, but far more alien. They felt wrong, and although Shepard muttered a thank-you to Morrigan, she was not entirely sure how she was going to use the blades. Both boot camp and N-school covered the basics for blades, but they only went so far. The weapon was archaic and near useless when fighting armored opponents.

Before, though—before the Reapers and Cerberus and becoming a Council Spectre, before even enlisting with an ID forged in the black market because she burnt her birth certificate—blades were her weapon of choice. The Reds did not pay for their lackeys' gear, and back then the only guns they could get were black market and thus too expensive for a homeless teen who fell out of the system. She once tried using a shitty model from Hahne-Kedar—the ugly ancestor of the less ugly, military-grade Kessler—looted from a dead mark. The gun had a nasty, unexpected recoil that dislocated her shoulder and nearly killed her partner. She learned to use it—a cheap gun was still a gun, when you needed to buy time from armored police—but for her daily run her serrated daggers had sufficed.

When Shepard enlisted, the Alliance gave her the L3 implant she coveted and finally her biotics could be more than the nightmarish bursts of energy that drove people away. It did not hurt either that the Alliance paid for their soldiers' gear. She stopped using blades since then.

A lifetime ago, literally, with a different pair of knives and a different name.

There was, however, one blade that stayed from the old days. She took her switchblade from the crate with her things and slipped it in her right boot. While it almost never saw any action, Shepard always kept a switchblade in her boot out of habit. A leftover from the days when sleeping was never safe, little more than a relic, but it was there, and it felt right to have its shape pressed to her calf. The antique-looking daggers might not agree with her just yet, but the little switchblade was ever a loyal companion.

Her Predator—nine slugs and a relatively good blunt object to club someone with—she slipped in the small of her back, secured by her belt. That felt wrong, too, because that was where her Claymore shotgun should go and the pistol should be at her hip. Without the magnet she usually had at the hip of her armor to attach the weapon to, however, the pistol would only be an uncomfortable bulk stuck in her belt, so to the back it went. Then she used a relatively less disgusting piece of fabric from the scraps of her under-armor to wrap the two tubes of medi-gel she salvaged and attached the makeshift pack to her belt.

"Okay," Shepard said finally, looking at Morrigan. "Let's go."

* * *

The "errand" so far turned out to be little more than a very confusing walk through the Wilds. It started out quite scenic—they walked in-between trees, the early sunlight filtering through the leaves in bunches of beams. They had breakfast while walking, two slices of bread and smoked mystery meat. The last time Shepard actually went to spend time in the nature like this was… well, she didn't think she ever did. Her childhood she spent between concrete and metal skyscrapers. There was around two months a couple took her in as their foster daughter in an emerging colony, but most of those two months she spent grounded in the pre-fab so-called "houses" of the couple. At the start of the ninth week, she was sent back to Earth, only to be recycled in the system.

The only time she went to a lush forest in the entirety of her career was that one mission to avenge Zaeed's lifelong nemesis. There was barely any time to appreciate the scenery when you were too busy ducking under the Blue Suns' suppressing fire and trying to keep a refinery intact while repressing the urge to point your pistol at your companion's face.

(She eventually did that, to prove her point to him, but that was _after_.)

There was also Virmire, but scenic as it was, that did not count. Nor did Aite—Cerberus had tainted that. Come to think of it, her life was pretty damn messed up if all the beautiful sceneries she had visited were associated to some form of carnage or another.

So the walk was pretty, in the beginning, but after Morrigan made yet another turn in the middle of the forest when no landmark was in sight (though she would swear that she had seen the oak with the branch that looked like a gnarled hand, at least twice this day) it was skirting dangerously into the frustrating territory. So Shepard stopped, and after several steps Morrigan realized that she was no longer following. Fringed skirt swishing as she turned on the spot, the younger woman frowned. "I had believed you to be strong, what with your warrior's build, but you are now fatigued already?"

"Tired? No. Annoyed? Maybe."

Morrigan raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms.

Shepard sighed. "Would it really hurt to tell the confused stranger where we're going, what we're doing there, and why you're taking these random turns?"

Morrigan rolls her eyes and went back walking. She answered, though, eventually. "We are headed to the ruins of Ostagar. We have something that needs to be delivered there."

Shepard eyed the satchel slung on Morrigan's shoulder and decided that this mysterious cargo must be in there. "And we're delivering this to an abandoned ruin."

"'Tis not exactly abandoned, at the moment."

"Squatters? More Witches of the Wilds?" Shepard guessed wildly, mostly just to keep Morrigan talking. She had learned enough that the witch took silence as an ending to the conversation, and hell if she was going to let this line of inquiry end.

"I shall not even ask what a _squatter _is."

"A squatter is a person who stays in abandoned places that do not belong to them. So, witches then?"

Morrigan paused, considering the word's definition. "Well, then _squatters _might actually be appropriate. As to whether or not there would be mages there, I am certain you shall meet at least one or two." She then stopped in her tracks, her hand resting on the bark of a tree and back straightening as she looked around the forest.

Shepard stilled. She knew that posture Morrigan just adopted; the witch had noticed something, a sound or smell or just a general feeling of wrongness that Shepard did not. The itch to take her pistol was there, but she opted to instead pulled her two daggers out from their sheaths, her stance ready despite the awkward way her hands gripped the unfamiliar handles.

Morrigan had shifted her stance further, feet apart and body lowered as though she was ready take on a charging krogan. The wooden staff she previously had slung on her back was now stiff in her grip, poised. Shepard had yet so seen what the staff could actually do, but if old school fantasy games were to be trusted, she guessed the staff worked much like how her bio-amp enhanced her biotics, only the staff was an external fixture instead of something embedded in the skull.

They held her breath. Shepard counted in her mind—one… two… three—and just as she was about to ask if Morrigan was sure it was not a false alarm—

The creatures emerged from between the trees ahead of them, snarling and spitting and reeking of rotten corpses. They were vaguely humanoid in anatomy, with yellowing rotten skin. Their eyes were milky and unfocused, yet they wore armor and positioned themselves with the practiced ease of military units—one archer, stout and cruel-looking in the back, the two taller ones guarding the front with their brandished swords and shields.

"Morrigan, take the sn—_archer_ out!" Shepard ordered as she leapt to the left, avoiding the jab of a sword none too soon. Shepard heard an angry, inhuman screech—she looked up and the archer was lit on fire, yet it still managed to nock an arrow in its bow and was about to pull the string, aiming—

—Shepard pumped dark energy to her legs and she made a leap, a charge fast enough to knock the archer back. Not wasting any time, she raised her dagger, stabbed the creature's neck, and twisted. A snarl from behind her, and she turned to see Morrigan sending what appeared to be a cryo blast to one creature that was entirely too close to Shepard. It had frozen solid, but the last creature was running headlong towards Morrigan. Shepard raised her hand, lifting the creature. For a moment it floated there, prone and vulnerable—this was the one moment when someone in her squad would be entirely too happy to empty their heat sink into the sucker—and the next she slammed it down with extra force.

Crunch.

And that was that. She turned to go back to her abandoned dagger—it had lodged itself solidly through the thing's neck—and tugged at it, freeing the blade. Blackened blood stained the previously-pristine metal. She turned to Morrigan, who was standing unharmed but rather startled. "What?"

Morrigan frowned, lips pursed in contemplation. "You said your world does not have magic."

Shepard groaned, wiping a hand over her eyes. "We don't. We have biotics, and though that's useful in itself it's still far less nifty than magic. Plus it's got a totally scientific explanation behind it. Not important. I can't use magic, never will be, none of that fireball attack you had going on." She kicked one of the creatures. The blood stained her boots and she immediately regretted it. "They're not the Wilds' regulars, I take it."

"Those were creatures called "darkspawns". Their lair is underground, in the Deep Roads built by the dwarves of old," Morrigan explained. She scanned the perimeter, then nodded, "Come. 'Tis wiser if we keep moving."

Shepard looked at her filthy dagger and wiped it on one of the darkspawn—could a name be more ominous-sounding?—until at it was at least less disgusting-looking. She needed a rag to clean her daggers, a whetstone to keep it sharpened, and a person to teach her to actually fight with them. Had Morrigan been just a little bit late, the darkspawn with the sword would have gotten her unaware and only armed in her less-dominant hand.

Shepard knew how to fight—she did, really, her career was all built over her fighting skills—but this was a different enemy with a pair of different weapons and a different traveling companion. No Vakarian watching her six, no Tali yelling at Chatika to go for the optics. Lucky she was travelling with a witch, she guessed.

She sheathed her daggers and followed Morrigan. "They leave their lair often?"

The witch glanced back with wariness and answered, softly, "No. They only leave the Deep Roads in large numbers during a Blight."

"Three is not—oh, hell no Morrigan. There's more?" She did not know what a Blight is, but it sounded just as ominous as the word darkspawn.

"Yes. Thousands, perhaps. Troops have been raiding villages, killing, wreaking havoc. The only reason Flemeth's hut is safe is because she casted a spell to protect the hut—people other than us will not be able to find it. The other side of the spell, however, also rends the person leaving the hut unable to reach their destination unless they follow a very specific path. 'Tis why we have taken a meandering one."

"What are these darkspawns? Why do they do what they do?"

"'Tis a long story. What matters now is that Ferelden is going through a Blight." Morrigan shook her head, smiling ruefully. "You picked an interesting time to arrive here."

"Not my choice," Shepard ground out through gritted teeth. "So tell me, why do we risk running into crazy rotten flesh army from hell just to deliver this thing?"

"These squatters in Ostagar are not mere homeless people. They are the Grey Wardens. An army neutral to all party, sworn to only fight the Blight. A romantic and foolish notion, yet now they are needed more than anything else. They have been preparing for a battle against a darkspawn horde. We have something that is of value to them." The forest ended, and before them was the ruin of a fortress past its glory days.

"This is Ostagar?" The ruins looked familiar, and Shepard suddenly realized that this was the very ruins visible from Flemeth's hut.

"Yes, 'tis the ruins of Ostagar." Morrigan took off the satchel she brought and handed it to Shepard. "I am not to enter. You shall do it."

Shepard took the satchel, frowning. "What about you? Waiting here until I'm done with the drop-off?"

"I…" Morrigan hesitated. "Flemeth intended me to leave you here and you to join their ranks."

"That doesn't make any sense." Her fingers clenched around the satchel's leather strap.

"I do not pretend to understand all Flemeth's intentions. No one does. But she wishes you to know that joining the Grey Warden is how you will find your answers," Morrigan explained. Shepard thought she sounded nearly apologetic. Nearly.

"Or die miserably. You saw how I did, one of the taller ones nearly skewered me through."

"You are a capable enough warrior, Shepard, and others will have your back. 'Tis a respectable, big order. The whole Thedas knows of them and respects them. You shall be able to travel during your missions with them. Somewhere along the way, you may just find a path home."

"Except now we're stuck here in Ferelden fighting darkspawn. So much for travel."

"Be reasonable," Morrigan said. "I have warned you that Flemeth does not do things out of compassion. You have accepted the fact that she will ask something from you."

_And isn't that the truth. Flemeth and The Illusive Man would get along swimmingly._ "They will not accept just anyone."

"You have something they need—something of theirs that was in mother's possession for safekeeping—and they are in war. They will find a place for you. The Warden-Commander is not a foolish man. You may wish to speak to him."

"What do I tell him, anyway?"

"The truth. A lie. Anything to make him take you in. Or tell him nothing, if you wish to."

"What if I don't want to join them?"

"You do not have a choice. You will not be able to find the hut again. Farewell, Shepard. I wish you good luck." Morrigan turned, and where she previously stood a black raven flapped its wings twice in mid-air before leaving with a caw.

And then Shepard was left standing alone at the edge of the ruins.

* * *

.

**A/N:** So to all reviewers who asked if Shep is going to be a warden, there's your answer. :3 As for necrofantasia, this Shepard is of Vanguard-class, and the singularity I blame on advanced training, heh heh. I actually don't play the multiplayer, so I did have to youtube N7 Fury. I don't intend to limit Shep in combat (except that her style would be strike hard, charge hard), so I suspect I'll use multiplayer skills for reference/inspiration if that will provide more variation.

As always, please do tell me what you think!


	4. Chapter 3

**3.**

"_They were soldiers no longer: They were the Grey Wardens."_

_-_From_Ferelden: Folklore and History__, by _Sister Petrine, Chantry scholar_._

* * *

It was pretty straightforward, when Shepard looked back to think about it. Sure, there had been a long uncomfortable moment when she just looked at the spot in the sky where the Morrigan raven had disappeared into, feeling like she had been tricked and wishing very fervently the Normandy would whoosh in and fill the spot to pick her up. That moment eventually passed, though the frustration never did.

And when the moment passed, it was just a matter of walking towards the most intact part of the ruin—a tall tower looking derelict and menacing. It was not long until she encountered the first ring of the perimeter guard standing by a rudimentary gate of sharpened logs. Understandably, he put his hand on the hilt of his sword, halted her, and asked her what she was doing.

Shepard was not sure how to answer the question. What _was _she doing? She tapped the satchel that Morrigan gave her—she still had not looked at what was in it—and said, as confidently as possible, "I need to deliver this to the Warden-Commander."

The guard had observed her with squinty eyes before answering with a swagger of a person who attempted authority, but in fact had none, "And wha's that in the satchel, eh?"

Shepard crossed her arms. "I honestly don't know. Only that it's important."

"Is that so?" he said, sneering. "Well, Ser Duncan's too _important_ to meet an errand girl, so—"

"Which I am not." _Ser Duncan. Must remember that name._

The guard was ready to make another snide comment, but then they were interrupted by a mild voice, saying, "Is there a problem?"

The man who approached wore much better armor than the guard, a sword the size of a human being slung at his back. He had a bulky build and a receding hairline. Considering the way the guard suddenly stood with his spine straight—_in attention_, Shepard thought, amused at how even several military protocols were even the same here despite all the other ridiculous differences—this new man clearly was the superior.

"Are you Ser Duncan?" Shepard asked.

The man blinked, perplexed, and he chuckled. "No, my lady. I am Ser Jory, previously a knight of Redcliffe under Arl Eamon's command, now to be recruited as a Grey Warden."

Shepard appraised the man. Despite the fact that half his speech sounded much like shit to her—_knights, should I even be surprised, and what the hell is Redcliffe and who is Arl Eamon—_he seemed reasonable, and more importantly, seemed used to command. Shepard unfolded her arm. If he could feed her shit, she could too. "I am Commander Shepard of the Alliance and the Council Special Tactic and Reconnaissance. I come from a faraway land, and would like to speak to the Warden-Commander."

Ser Jory reacted almost exactly as Shepard expected him to. He regarded her a bit more warily, taking in the way she stood with her skin still slightly grimed and sticky, her armor splattered with blackened darkspawn blood, the weapons strapped to her back. "If I may ask, which land do you hail from?"

"It's… kind of a long story. One I'd rather tell Ser Duncan myself. Ser, I have spent the better part of the day in travel. It'd be great if I can just meet him ASAP." Shepard coughed. "Um, as soon as possible."

"Ser Duncan has just returned from a long travel himself, I am not sure if… what's this?" the knight asked as Shepard handed him the satchel.

"I don't know. But I heard the Grey Warden needs it." The guard made a protesting noise, clearly insulted that he was previously refused access to the satchel that was now in Ser Jory's hands. Shepard ignored him.

As it turned out, inside the satchel was a leather folder of some sorts, and inside the folder, several pieces of parchment that put surprise on Ser Jory's expression. "Yes," he said slowly, "I think Ser Duncan would want to know where you got this."

His tone betrayed something like suspicion when he said it and Shepard tensed. "I did not steal it, if that's what you're implying. I don't even know what's in it."

He dipped his head. "Apologies, my lady. It's just… unexpected to see these documents. Please, follow me."

Ser Jory then led Shepard through the encampment of the Grey Wardens, a smattering of carts and tents among jutting broken pillars and boulders of Ostagar. On a stage, a woman in a sunburst-patterned robe was preaching to a small mass. Behind the stage was a separate camp with a perimeter of their own. Mages were inside the camp practicing, well, magic—arms stretched to the sky and bending balls of light as they moved—while two guards in plate armor stood by the camp gate.

"Are they all Grey Wardens?" Shepard asked as they passed by the preaching woman whose speech—"_violently they were cast down, for no mortal may walk bodily in the realm of dreams"_—was not what Shepard would call inspiring. In fact, it reminded her of a certain batarian in Omega.

"No," Ser Jory answered. "Do you not have Grey Wardens in your land?"

"My homeland is very different." Understatement of the century.

"I understand. Well, not all of them are Grey Wardens. Some are King Cailan's soldiers, aiding the war. Some there are Circle Mages, and they bring with them a group of Templars. The Chantry sent a few sisters and brothers to give blessings and raise the troop morale."

"I see." She did not. All she got was that the King apparently sent some troops, and the Chantry was likely the darker, creepier version of the church. She was contemplating whether to ask more questions, but then Ser Jory stopped in his track and Shepard did too. Ahead was a semi-open tent where a three armored people were standing around a huge slab of marble used as a makeshift table.

"It seems like Ser Duncan is in a meeting."

"Who are they?"

"That's His Majesty King Cailan and his general, Teyrn Loghain."

Shepard frowned. "The king is here? Isn't that dangerous, letting him fight in the frontlines?"

Clearing his throat first, Ser Jory answered cautiously, "His Majesty is… young. Enthusiastic. He is taken with the idea of glory in war."

So the king must be the younger-looking one with golden hair and gold armor that gleamed with its apparent lack of use. Wonderful. "War is bloody. You lose people in the way and there's no glory in the end, just fatigue."

"You have seen your share of battle."

"I have."

The meeting finally over, the three people walked away from the marble slab and towards Ser Jory and Shepard. The king walked first, young and naïve with his head held high with unbroken confidence. Following him were two older men, one with a cross face and a beak-like nose, the other dark-skinned and dark-haired. Both seemed tired. The king remained oblivious.

"Ser Duncan," said Ser Jory.

The dark-skinned man nodded to Ser Jory. "I am no anointed knight, Ser Jory. It is just Duncan."

_Ah._ So this was Duncan. Ser or no ser, he exuded command and experience, demanding respect even without owning a particular title. "Warden-Commander," Shepard said, stepping forward. "I was hoping to speak to you."

"I do not believe we are introduced, Miss…?"

"Shepard. Commander Shepard of Alliance Navy, Fifth Fleet, and Council Special Tactic and Reconnaisance."

If the title drop confused Duncan, he was good at hiding it. Instead he merely inclined his head and asked, "And what is the purpose of your travel here?"

This time, it was Ser Jory who stepped forward to explain. "She has the Treaties, Ser Duncan."

Duncan frowned. "Truly? Have you seen them?"

Offering the satchel, Shepard said, "Here. I come here to deliver this. Can I talk to you? Privately?"

Much like how Ser Jory did earlier, Duncan took a look at the parchments inside the leather folder before nodding. "I believe that would be best."

* * *

Duncan's tent was slightly bigger than the rest, but not excessively furnished. A bedroll on one side, several chests, a flagon on a tray, two stools. He took off his weapons—one long sword and one dagger, although Shepard would bet that he carried more—before sitting on a stool. He motioned to the other stool. Shepard sat.

"Would you care to sup? I have yet eaten anything since I returned to the camp," Duncan offered.

Shepard nodded gratefully. "That'd be great, thanks."

Duncan rose from his stool and leaned out of his tent. "Fetch some food for our guest and me," he ordered to someone outside the tent. Taking two cups, he poured something dark—wine?—from the flagon and offered one to Shepard. She drank and nearly choked. The wine was sour and bitter and all sorts of disgusting—not even ryncol could beat it, or the batarian poison once served to her in Omega—but hell if she was going to show that she was the lesser drinker. She downed the glass in a manner that would have made Wrex proud. When she looked up, Duncan was looking at her with a mixture of disgust and amusement.

"Would you care for more?" he asked very politely. Too politely. Shepard winced. He clearly thought she was alcoholic now.

"I'd like to stay sober, thanks. But if you have water…"

He offered a skin of water. Shepard unstoppered it and gulped. "Thanks." She wiped her mouth and placed the stopper back. "So…" she wrung her wrists, "I'm not really sure how to start."

"Where did you get the Treaties?" Duncan prompted.

"Oh, is that what those papers were? I was told to deliver it by Flemeth and Morrigan."

"Flemeth."

"Yes, the Witch of The Wilds. And her daughter Morrigan. Said it was with her for safekeeping."

"That is… impossible. The Witch of The Wilds is a myth."

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Shepard replied, "You tell me, I didn't even know magic and _darkspawn_ exist last week. By the way, Morrigan said the myth is greatly exaggerated."

"I… see. And you said you did not know about magic and darkspawn?"

"They don't exist where I came from."

"And where is that?" Duncan asked, leaning forwards in interest.

Shepard froze. Where did she come from? She was from Earth, or at least she was born and raised there by the streets, but she was not going to call it her home. She was trained in the Alliance—boot camp in Arcturus, then assignments after assignments in colonies and ships—and her career was defined in Elysium. Then Luna for a while before N-school, then the Normandy. And from that first shakedown run that was not a shakedown, until the battle in London, it had always been the Normandy, both SR-1 and SR-2.

She was not sure if it was a bad thing, having the Normandy as the only place she could call home in the past four years.

How was she going to explain that her home was a spaceship that existed somewhere out there? Morrigan and Flemeth seemed to grasp the situation quick enough, even better than Shepard had been, but she was now very acutely aware that the two witches were not the norm in Thedas. Shepard opted for the safest answer—which happened to be also the vaguest one—and answered, "Far away from here. I mostly live in my ship."

"Ah, yes. You mentioned a fleet."

Before Duncan could inquire further, a servant woman peered in the tent with a tray in her hands. "Ser? I bring the food you asked for."

Duncan nodded and gestured to a flat-topped chest, where the woman placed the tray. She left promptly after refilling their two cups with more wine. As she bowed her way out, Shepard noticed that her ears were rather pointed, and though she looked very much humanoid, there was a sense of disproportion with her physique—a little too lithe and slender, face a little bit feline with the tilt of her eyes, the arch of her forehead. Shepard itched to ask if the woman was an elf, but not wanting to make a fool of herself, she stayed quiet.

For a while, they ate. Roasted meat of something, some nuts, dried fruits, baked potatoes. The array was far from the meager stews and soups she had in Flemeth's hut; in comparison, this meal was almost luxurious. "This is quite rich for an army camp."

Duncan swallowed and took a gulp of wine before answering, "We have been quite fortunate. So far we have gone through three battles, each with increasing size of darkspawn horde, and we have won them all. Provision is still quite plenty and the king insists that I should eat the food his cooks make for him."

"You disapprove?"

"I am a Grey Warden, not nobility. But naturally one could not just refuse such an offer from the king."

Shepard hummed in response and continued eating. For a while, the two just ate in companionable silence until Duncan broke it and said, "So you come from far away, you have met Flemeth, and you brought us the documents that by all means should be safely sealed in the Grey Warden cache. Somehow I get the feeling you are not ordinary."

Mouth twisted into a wry smile, Shepard put down her fork and ran her fingers through her hair. "I suppose I'm not."

She looked at him, gauging his expression, but he looked nothing more than contemplative. Her mouth felt dry just then, her hand picking up her cup and lifting it to her lips unthinkingly. She took a gulp. It was still awful. And then, she told Duncan her story. Not everything, of course—she left out the space travel and other species and technology, no need to overwhelm and sound crazy—but she told him about the war against the Reapers, an enemy that returned to purge civilizations every fifty thousand years, she told him about the super weapon that was the Crucible, she told him about her sacrifice. That she had to choose a fate for the entire galaxy, that she was not even supposed to survive the choice.

"And I woke up in the Wilds half-dead. I guess you know who saved me."

Duncan had stopped eating; his full attention was on Shepard. Sharp eyes observed her, and she noticed that he might not be far from Anderson's age. She looked at him straight in the eyes, challenging him to call her crazy or insane. He did not.

"What do you plan to do now?"

"I… don't know. I really don't." It was the truth. Morrigan and Flemeth told her that she should join the Grey Wardens, but she was unsure if she should. "They said I should ask you to join your ranks."

This surprised Duncan, she could tell now. "Is that so?"

"Yes. I don't really know how to get back, and I have nowhere to go. I don't think I have much choice in the matter." She refrained from saying that Morrigan also suggested her to join the Grey Wardens to get a free pass to travel.

Duncan seemed to consider the idea. He stood and paced his tent, thinking. "I have just returned from Highever, up north. I meant to find a recruit there, but I was too late. Someone betrayed the Teyrn of Highever, and the entire castle was slaughtered."

_Murdered by their kin and allies. Yet you are here, and you do not belong._ Flemeth's voice was ice and sand, looping in her mind and dragging a chill down her spine.

Shepard made her mind. "So now you need a recruit. I can fight. I have survived a war that by all means should have killed me. I have brought you your Treaties."

"Yes, I suppose I should thank you for that. The Treaties bind the dwarves of Orzammar, the Circle of Magi, and the Dalish elves to aid the Grey Warden in times of Blight. I meant to send the recruits to retrieve it from our cache in the Wilds, but you have saved us the trouble."

"You're welcome, I guess."

Duncan nodded. "You should rest. The recruits will leave tomorrow morning to prepare for the Joining Ritual to make them real Grey Wardens. If you still wish to join, you will go with them."

Shepard took that as a dismissal. She stood and nodded. "Thank you, Ser Duncan."

"I am not a knight."

"Still. Thanks."

* * *

Shepard did not have a tent of her own, so they found her a bedroll at the edge of the servants' big tent. Most of the servants had the same pointed ears and odd structure that the one she saw yesterday. Elven, she reminded herself. Unlike a lot of the mythologies and fantasy stories she had heard, the elves were not regal, undying creatures here, and this unsettled her. They looked at her with wide eyes. Their gaze strayed to the blades she strapped at her back, and when she took out the one dagger still sticky with darkspawn blood, they shrunk back. She knew those looks. Those were the looks that street rats wore when she and the Reds passed them by. "Sorry," she said to the girl closest to her, "do you have a rag I can use to clean this?"

The girl nodded and scurried away, returning moments later with a rag and some oil that smelled almost like gun oil. "Thanks," Shepard said to the girl, attempting a smile. The girl smiled back thinly, but did not relax much. Shepard cleaned her blades, set the rag and oil aside, then sheathed the daggers. When she turned to get the rag and oil so she could return them, they were no longer there.

Shepard figured it might be best if she did not scare the servants further, so she slept facing the tarp of the tent that night.

She woke like clockwork, the same way she had woken every day on 0500 hours according to the Normandy's cycle. It pleased her; that her biological clock was returning to normal meant she could at least rely on one constant for the next days filled with the unknown. Some of the servants were up, too, but not all. She pulled on the outer-layer of her leather armor, her gloves, and her boots before tiptoeing over still sleeping figures and exited the tent—and bumped into something hard and broad and cold metal.

"Whoa there!"

Shepard stepped back. She had apparently bumped into a fully-armored man who was looking at her as if he was unsure what to do with her. "What?" she asked him.

"Nothing. I, uhh, imagined you to be smaller?"

This time she really took a look at him, and was jarred at how young he was. He was perhaps the right age to be fresh out of boot camp, not far over twenty-one, with an unkempt stubble, bright eyes, and an aura of clumsiness. His image contrasted with his built figure—suggesting that while he was young, he was also trained. And he was quite tall. Not towering over her, because she was not exactly small, but tall enough for her to have to tilt her head slightly up to look him in the eye.

He fumbled under her observation and continued hastily, "I'm Alistair. A junior Grey Warden. Duncan sent me to fetch the recruit. Err, that is you, right?"

"Ah. Yeah. That's me. My name's Shepard."

"Right. I wasn't sure, but I hardly think servants get to wear armors."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Uh-huh. So what's with the morning call?" It was easy to drop the formality with him, she noticed, unlike with Morrigan and her stiff attitude, or Flemeth and her riddles, or any of the other men she met yesterday.

"Oh, haven't Duncan told you? The recruits are supposed to go to the Wilds to prepare for their joining. As the junior Grey Warden in the camp, I have the honor of accompanying you there."

Shepard opened her mouth, about to retort that she could take care of herself, but decided against it. After all, she had almost been skewered by a sneaky flanking darkspawn just the day before. "Okay," she nodded, "now?"

"Yeah, though you might want to bring your weapons."

"One sec." Shepard went back into the tent. She strapped on her blades and put her pistol on the small of her back, her medi-gel on the belt by her waist. She ran her fingers through her hair and found that it had knotted on several places. Attempting her best to straighten her hair up, she walked out of the tent. "Okay. Let's go. Can we at least have breakfast first, though?"

"Breakfast's served over there, but I snuck some bread cause that line's getting long," he said, offering a bread to Shepard. She nibbled it—it was stale, but no worse than cardboard MREs served in the SR1—as she watched a growing line of hungry soldiers waiting for their rations.

"Probably wiser, yeah." The line was moving sluggishly as they walked past, and Shepard noticed something. "No female soldiers, huh?"

Alistair shrugged. "Ah, right, Duncan did say you're not Fereldan. Hmm, how do I say it… it's not that women can't fight, it's just few really were good enough."

"Are you saying…"

"No! No no no, I didn't mean that, I mean, ah, sod it. I mean few really chose to fight and go through training and be actual soldiers. Some are really damn good, course, like Ser Cauthrien—that's Teyrn Loghain's right hand sword—but they're rare. Then there's you, of course, hey where are you going?"

Shepard had sidetracked towards a fenced area at that point, drawn by the barks of dog. They had _dogs_. She had not seen any dogs since her childhood and even then most were strays that would rather bite her than play with her, but she had always been fond of the smelly, fuzzy things. Even though she usually just stared at cute puppy pictures on the extranet.

These were not tiny corgi or Chihuahua, however. They were almost as tall as her hip, corded muscle and brawn in drooling packages. Most wore collars, some had paint smeared over their fur in patterns. They reminded her of the varren in Tuchanka.

"So… _cute_."

The kennel master seemed rather affronted by this, saying, "They're not supposed to be cute. They're Mabari War Hounds. Very loyal companions, and highly intelligent too."

"What's wrong with that one?" Said Alistair, having caught up with her, pointing to the one with a separate kennel. It was snarling and rather rabid-looking.

"He's poisoned with darkspawn blood, and now he bites everyone coming near him. I could clean his wound and help him, but he won't let me." He looked at her, an idea dawning on his expression. "Hey, I don't suppose you'd help me with muzzling her?"

"Uh," said Shepard, "sure." The prospect of being dismembered by a rabid sick dog—no, Mabari War Hound—did not excite her much, but she supposed she could not call herself a dog lover and refuse to help.

So with apprehension, Shepard approached the dog with a muzzle in her hand, slowly. The dog barked and tried to bite her, Shepard lunged with the muzzle, and after a long wrestle with the thing in the mud, the muzzle was on.

It was a wonderful way to start her day, with mud smearing her only set of attire and clotting in her hair. The kennel master thanked her, then asked her if she could bring him a flower from the wilds that could be used a sort of medicine for the mabari. Shepard agreed, and then she left with Alistair.

Waiting at the edge of the encampment were Ser Jory and another man, one Shepard figured was also a recruit. Shepard nodded to Ser Jory, who smiled back. The other man just watched her with interest.

"Alright. So, Shepard, these are the other recruits. Ser Jory and Daveth. Ser Jory, Daveth, this is Shepard."

"I did not know you would be joining us," said Ser Jory.

"Well, I wasn't sure if Duncan would let me, so," Shepard shrugged.

Alistair looked between the two, apparently not expecting them to know each other, but said nothing of the matter. He cleared his throat. "Right. Today we're going to prepare for your Joining." He handed them each a phial, stoppered with cork. "You're going to the Wilds to fight darkspawn, then collect their blood until it's enough to fill that phial."

Shepard looked at the phial in her hand incredulously. "And how is this going to be used in this Joining thing? Not something crazy like drinking it, I hope."

Alistair cleared his throat again, eyes shifting to the side. "Of course not."

"That's disgusting! Isn't it poisonous?" Shepard exclaimed.

"And that's why you're not going to drink it," Alistair answered smoothly. "The Joining is an ancient ritual to give the Grey Wardens the abilities needed to battle the darkspawn."

Shepard gagged. "Yeah, totally drinking it. Thanks a lot, Morrigan," she mumbled.

The other recruits, however, seemed more concerned about the part where they had to go to the Wilds. "We can't go to the Wilds!" whined Daveth. "There are werewolves there!"

Shepard snorted. "I didn't see any werewolves when I passed the Wilds yesterday," she said mildly.

Daveth ignored her. "And don't tell me we have to go deep in to find that cache with the Treaties. Who knows what we'd meet there."

"Ah, actually," Ser Jory coughed, "I hardly think that's necessary. Shepard here yesterday brought the Treaties to camp."

Daveth visibly slumped in relief. "Thank the Maker for that, then."

"I still don't get why you're more concerned about that than the fact that we have to dr—"

"Alright! Come on, the Wilds await!" Alistair called, shooting a dirty look at Shepard.

The gate squeaked open, and they left camp.

* * *

It was not long before they encountered the first group of darkspawn. Alistair had halted their pace long before the group appeared. "Darkspawn. Five, I think, just a scouting party or some stragglers. Headed this way."

When the darkspawn showed up from between trees—Alistair's estimation was right, there were five of them, this time, two archers in the back and three with swords—Shepard pulled out her daggers and yelled at the rest, "Watch my flank!"

She first threw a shockwave and with glee she watched them thrown and toppled. The archers in the back got the least of the impact, and they merely lost a bit of balance, but that was enough. Shepard charged towards one archer and stabbed it, but she did not expect the resistance of its armor. The stab was shallow; it only angered the howling darkspawn. The creature swung at her with a dagger—_when did it pull out a secondary weapon?_—and she dodged, but the dagger glanced her arm and the searing pain of a blade cut shot up her right arm and her fingers twitched, dropping the dagger in her right hand.

Now she was pissed.

She dropped her other dagger and made an open-palmed strike at the darkspawn with her left hand, as she pulled her right and concentrated bright blue energy in it—

—the darkspawn was knocked back a little, and as he lunged forward again, her right fist connected and she could feel the bones inside it cracking, giving up as the charged punch made impact.

It fell and stopped moving.

Shepard picked up her daggers and looked around. During her pitiful display of dagger fumbling, her three acquaintances had made short work of the rest of the darkspawn and she turned just in time as Alistair beheaded the last creature standing with a surprisingly graceful arc of his long sword.

He caught her watching him and raised an eyebrow. "What?"

Shepard shrugged. "For a good fighter you sure suck at lying."

His eye twitched. "Thanks… I guess." He slipped his sword back in the sheath and walked towards her, frowning over the slash on her arm. He pulled out a jar and scooped out something green and goopy. "Elfroot poultice," he explained, dabbing the ointment on her wound. "So, you're a mage huh?" he asked conversationally.

_Not this again_. "I'm not a mage," said Shepard as she knelt down by the darkspawn she killed, "I use biotics. It's… something from where I come from."

Ser Jory caught on. "Well, that looked a lot like magic. Where did you come from anyway?"

"She doesn't look like a Rivaini, doesn't sound like an Orlesian or Antivan… Free Marches?" Daveth piped in.

Ser Jory shook his head. "The Marchers don't sound like her."

Shepard carelessly stabbed the neck of the darkspawn she killed and pulled out the dagger glistening with blackened blood. She rested the tip to the mouth of her phial and waited as trickles sluggishly fell in. "I'm not…" she coughed. "It's complicated. Doesn't matter. Point is, I'm far enough from home I'm not sure if I could ever return."

Or if she even had somewhere to return to. The one thought she had been avoiding was the possibility of the Crucible somehow failing or backfiring, and that the Reapers did manage to erase her civilization. She shook the train of thought off.

The blood was thick and glutinous, dripping into the phials in slow drops. She had to make two more cuts in the darkspawn's body to get a full phial. Stoppering the phial, she was all too eager to get away from the rotting stench.

And if she read Alistair right, they were so going to drink the blood. Her stomach rolled at the thought.

Why did she agree to do this again? Right, she did not, and this little cult of warriors was the only one desperate enough to take her in.

She was running escape scenarios in her mind when Daveth called her, "So, Shepard?"

"Yeah?"

"That's not a very girly name."

"That's because it isn't. It's my surname."

His face brightened and split into a grin. "So you must have a first name right? Right?"

"Yeah, but I—uh, I'd really rather not."

Daveth protested, but Shepard raised her hand to stop him. "It's really just Shepard to pretty much everyone. That or Commander." Even when she was technically not with the Alliance, she had been Commander to her Cerberus crew.

It was then Ser Jory joined the conversation, "Ah, yes. I remember you addressing yourself such. Alliance and Council something?"

"Commander Shepard of the Alliance and Council Special Tactic and Reconnaissance. I was military where I come from, that's the Commander part. The Special Tactic and Reconnaissance, in short Spectre, is a job given to agents deemed capable enough to resolve problems. They don't have to strictly follow the law either."

"You sound important," said Alistair in awe.

"I was. Sort of. Although most of the time I felt like I was just doing someone's dirty work."

"Why come here, then?" he asked further.

Shepard's mouth twisted downwards. "Not my choice."

* * *

They arrived at camp around noon; that left them enough time to clean up and rest until the Joining Ritual, which should take place at dusk. So along with the other two recruits, Shepard went to the queue for lunch—stopping in the way to give the kennel master the flower herb she had picked for the war hound.

The gruel was nasty, a far cry from what she had in Duncan's tent the day before. The whole thing was just grey and suspiciously savory, like melted cannibal fat or something. Some of the men, however, went and asked for seconds, Daveth included. Ser Jory was just stirring his gruel with an absently distant expression. Shepard, the dutiful soldier that she was, finished the gruel with the determination of a recruit at boot camp, but did not ask for more. She was nowhere near full—biotics and loaded cybernetics exhausted her energy, fast—but she would be sick if she ate more.

As she watched Daveth's ravenous eating, an idea popped into her head. "Hey, Daveth?" she asked. "You use dual daggers too, right?"

He swallowed—thankfully—before answering. "Long sword and dagger, actually, but in theory the same. Why?"

"We got time after this. Teach me how to use them? My usual weapons didn't make it here, and the last time I used daggers, well, it was different."

He shrugged. "Sure I guess." Then he grinned. "Do I get to know your first name if I help you?"

"Nice try."

They found a clearing at the edge of the camp after lunch. "Right. So, how much do you know already?" asked Daveth.

"Stick them with the pointy end," Shepard grumbled. She knew enough, but not for this kind of dagger. The size was wrong, the balance off in her hands. It felt more like holding a short sword instead of an actual dagger.

"True, but I was hoping you'd go deeper." Daveth sighed exaggeratedly. "You fought good, but you do realize that I saved your neck back then? The other archer would have gotten you if I hadn't stabbed it."

"Oh shit, again?" She pressed her palm to her temple, rubbing a phantom migraine.

"What?"

"Nothing, when I… hm. Never mind. I guess I'm just used to having Ga—someone watch my six."

"Your what?"

"Six. My six. It's a slang… ah, it means watching my back. In combat."

Daveth nodded. "Makes sense. You're a commander too, right? Guess you're used to ordering people around, like back then. Nope, don't be sorry, just pointing out a fact. Thing is, you won't always have someone to save your back, and I don't think people usually match that speed you have."

So then he taught her. First, he taught her how to grip the dagger—an extension to your arm, but must never be a hindrance—and then how to slash with the dagger. She was impressed. The moves he taught her were swift, but not overly obnoxious like Kai Leng's gang of Cerberus phantoms. In fact, it seemed to aim for as less showmanship as possible, intending to escape notice. When the sun had begun its descent, they had moved on to the bit about side-stepping the enemy and moving inconspicuously.

"How do you do that?" Shepard asked, amazed. Daveth had a certain skill to go unnoticed as he maneuvered, almost invisible to the untrained eye. It was not that he actually went invisible; he was just very good at escaping people's attention.

"What, stealth?" He laughed. "Has to be invisible to be a cutpurse in Denerim. It's how I get recruited, I guess. Tried to cut Duncan's purse, but he caught me and ran after me. The old man was _fast_," he said in awe. "Ends up a guard caught me and nearly had me hanged, but Duncan invoked the Right of Conscription."

"He recruited you?"

"Yeah. Saved my bloody neck, he did."

"And you're okay with that, forced to fight in the war?"

He sheathed his own blades and rolled his shoulder. "I saw the villages already attacked by the Blight on my way here from Denerim. If we don't fight it, we'll all be dead. I'd sooner die fighting. And the Grey Wardens are very respected, you know? Better than a cutpurse." He paused, contemplating. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm alright with being conscripted."

* * *

They stood in the ruins of what had been a circular chamber—a temple, perhaps—of the old castle, now open to the sky. Dusk had fallen, and Duncan stood as he explained how they would gain the ability to sense darkspawns and be immune to their taint, even use it to kill the archdemon—whatever an archdemon was. All these for the cheap price of simply drinking the darkspawn blood with a sprinkle of magic in it.

Alistair avoided Shepard's gaze then.

Ser Jory protested in fear. Just before, he talked in length about having a pregnant wife in Redcliffe, a family to go home to, and now the prospect of drinking poisonous blood did not sit well with him. Not that Shepard was fine with it. She was still running those escape mechanisms in mind when Alistair stepped forward and began the ritual, his words echoing between the pillars.

"_Join us, brothers and sisters. Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten. And that one day we shall join you."_

A cult, Shepard thought, complete with the fancy ominous-sounding words. But at least this cult was fighting something real, something she had fought. Much as she felt she should run now before she got in too deep, logic dictated that her best chance was here. If she ran, she had nowhere to go while she would still have to fight the incoming darkspawns while outnumbered, possibly poisoned in the future by their blood.

_Joined a cult. Kept the haircut._ Jack would loathe this place. She struggled not to grin.

"Daveth, step forward," called Duncan.

Daveth stepped forward, took the chalice filled with the blood they had collected, and drank. His face scrunched as he bore the taste. Then, he convulsed, his eyes all white as they rolled back into his skull.

Shepard watched as he died.

A distant part of her wondered if the Cerberus cybernetics were equipped to battle this kind of poison. Maybe not.

"Step forward, Jory."

Ser Jory balked, babbling about his wife and the beautiful future he most definitely would not spoil by dying. About how there was no glory in this. Duncan stepped forward, the chalice in his hand. Wide-eyed and panicking, Ser Jory drew his sword.

Swift, without hesitation or wasted movements, Duncan drew his own blade, parried the strike incoming his way, and gutted Ser Jory then and there.

Alistair cringed, but otherwise stood passively.

Ser Jory fell lifelessly, the faintest choking sounds dying in his throat, his blood spattering the otherwise dull grey granite floor.

Shepard averted her eye from the body. "I told him yesterday that war was never glorious. I thought he'd understand."

There was something like regret in Duncan's eyes as he called, "Shepard, step forward."

She took the chalice with cold fingers and offered a wry smile. "So no stepping back, huh?"

"I am sorry."

"That I might die? It's nothing I've never handled before."

She lost count of the times she might have, should have died. Every single day with the Reds. Elysium. Eden Prime. Ilos. Alchera. London.

Now, Thedas.

There was not much blood left in the chalice. One shot glass, maybe less, and she downed it in one swallow.

Fire shot in her veins, and she understood that it was the darkspawn's taint and what they called the corruption burning her. She dropped her chalice and opened her mouth to scream. No sound came out of her. More fire, this time the heat of machines and she thought that would be the cybernetics fighting the taint and she was the battleground caught in the crossfire, scorched with the war fought between the two invisible forces and she remembered Alchera and how suffocation was also pain yet a mercy compared to this, whatever this is.

Her legs gave way and she collapsed like a rag doll and she barely felt the ache of a hard floor meeting her.

* * *

A dragon. She did not know why a dragon, but it was there—spiked scales and terrible—in her dream. No, not a dream. A vision. Like the Prothean beacon, she knew this was real, very much so.

When the demon screeched, she opened her eyes, and met the faces of Alistair and Duncan.

"It is done," Duncan said, and Alistair gave her a pendant filled with darkspawn blood to remember those who did not survive, but Shepard could only think of the dragon, the menace of its breath, the terrifying feeling that it was real and not just a dream.

"Did you have dreams?" Alistair asked.

"Yeah. Yeah, but I don't—I mean—I think it's real."

"The dreams signify the growing connection with the darkspawn," Duncan explained. "Part of being a Grey Warden is to be connected to the hive mind controlling the darkspawn through the taint. That means sometimes images of them will find us in our sleep."

"So it'll get worse?"

"Yes, especially during a Blight."

_Wonderful._

* * *

.

**A/N: **So, long chapter! I swear I've had this sitting in my hard drive for a week or so, but I was so not happy with it. Still not entirely pleased now, but I think stewing over it for much longer won't really help. Anyway. I hope you like it. It's a bit slow for now, but I plan to pick up the pace after Ostagar is done. I have a few things that might deviate from canon, too. On another note, I notice loads of people are following the story. I didn't know anyone would even... but eh. This makes me happy. Happier, even, if you tell me what you think. So, please review? :3


	5. Chapter 4

**4.**

"_Only the foolish mourn the loss of innocence. It is inevitable. The galaxy has never rewarded the naive."_

—Javik, 2186 CE

* * *

Shepard sensed an impending migraine in her near future.

"So you're saying that your Grey Wardens," she said, gesturing to Duncan, "will be bait for the darkspawn horde."

Duncan nodded. "Yes."

"And your troop," she continued, waving a hand towards Loghain, "would flank the horde as soon as Alistair and I got to the top of the tower and light the signal beacon?"

"Correct," said Loghain.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "That's a desperate plan." Not that she was not unfamiliar with all sorts of desperate plans. Had London not been one?

"It is. With the size of the coming horde, however, I am afraid it is the only viable plan. A large group of Grey Wardens should attract the darkspawn, leaving Loghain's troops free to launch a surprise attack."

"You'll get flattened," Shepard responded.

"Our numbers may not be great ever since Garahel vanquished the Fourth Blight, but we have trained and we are the most experienced when it comes to holding the line against darkspawn," said Duncan. "We would hold long enough to wait for the flanking attack."

"And the flanking attack would be massive enough to overwhelm the horde," Loghain added.

"Yes," said the King, "I will rely on you, Loghain."

"Of course, Your Majesty."

And there was the migraine. Shepard ground her teeth. "You got to be kidding me. You're going to be part of the bait troop?"

"Ferelden does not need a cowardly king." Pompous. Naïve. Very naïve. At best, blindly optimistic.

"With all due respect, Your Majesty," _which means kiss my ass_, "I'm sure Ferelden needs a dead king even less." Faintly, she could hear Alistair trying to stifle a cough. Or a chuckle. It was hard to tell.

"Is that a _threat_?" the young king asked her, thoroughly insulted with a sprinkle of bravado.

Shepard thought she hated politicians. As it turned out, she hated royalties more. In reply, she let her eyes rake down his stupid, glimmering golden armor and all the swirling ornate patterns and embedded jewels. She honestly hoped the gold was just a coating, not an actual part of the metal alloy, or his life expectancy would drop deeper into the pit it was already in.

The discussion only went downhill from there, and any further show concern for Cailan's survival expressed by the Warden-Commander or the General was denied, despite having been worded more delicately than her attempt. Not for a lack of trying, though. At one point, Duncan shot her a look that made her feel like she was bound to be stuck in latrine duty. The thought terrified her beyond reason, considering they did not even have proper latrines.

Shepard sighed. _Not having command stinks._

The meeting continued.

* * *

Alistair positively sulked. He wanted action; that much was obvious to Shepard. It was an all too familiar scene to her. "You know, I used to have a soldier like you under my command. Damn good, damn talented, eager for action."

"Yeah?"

"Yep. Name's Jenkins. About your age, too."

He seemed to sense where the conversation was going. Eyes narrowed, head slightly tilted in suspicion, he asked, "I'm not going to like where this is going, am I?"

Shepard shrugged. "Guess not. He died, day one. Gunned down because he was too eager to jump in and not look for cover."

"Gunned…?"

Shepard took out her Predator, unfolded it, and turned it in her hand. "This is a gun. It's a common weapon where I came from. It shoots out a projectile, hm, like a crossbow, I guess, only the bolts are smaller, faster, and definitely deadlier." She shrugged. "I'd give you a demo, but I only have nine shots left." In theory, the heat sink mechanism could somehow be rigged so as to not require thermal clips any more, in the expense of projectile force. She was no tech specialist, however, and would rather attempt that after than before she spent all nine shots.

Alistair's gaze followed the pistol's shape in interest, mouth half-open as if he was about to ask something, most likely about the pistol and definitely not about Jenkins. She folded the pistol and returned it to the small of her back. "But point is, he died."

He did not lose a beat. "Soldiers die in war."

"Sure. I'm not saying you would, or wouldn't. I'm saying you could. But that's not what your commanding officer needs from you right now. From us. He gave us a responsibility to climb that damn tower and actually be the key in the plan, and we're going to do it. Ours is not to reason why, _soldier_." Ashley would have been proud. She actually quoted poetry.

Alistair stiffened at her words. "Yet you also protested at the plan. To the king's face, no less."

Ah. He caught her there. "He was dumb. Worse, he was ignorant. Usually my commanding officers are better in making decisions." Not entirely true, of course, but then none of her commanding officers were actually spoiled royalty in jeweled armor. "But I accept the role they assign me."

"I understand that, you know. But I do not have to like the fact that Duncan tries his best to distance me from battles."

Shepard frowned, a thin line between her eyebrows. "Why would he do that? You're a damn good fighter. I thought he picked you for the beacon run because you're reliable, not—"

"Shepard."

Shepard blinked. _Speak of the devil. _"Commander."

"A word, please." Then, to Alistair, "We have a long night ahead of us, Alistair. It is best you prepare."

Shepard gave Alistair a pat on the shoulder before following Duncan to his tent. He poured her the same wine from the same flagon from two days before, and this time Shepard was wise enough to merely sip. The thing was still vile.

"So," she said, tilting her cup and watching the wine swish inside, "what's this about?"

Duncan gave her that look again—the one that screamed latrine duty if placed on an Alliance Officer's face—and Shepard straightened in her seat. "I am not aware of how things are conducted in your homeland—"

_And here we go._

"—but in Ferelden, a king's word is law. Even Loghain, his general, father-in-law, and most trusted advisor, could never be so forward to him. In which case, I thank you."

"Wait, what?"

"If you had been a Fereldan, you would not have gotten away with your insult. Yet, what you said needs to be said. The king would be insulted, as we have seen, but that means he at least listened. Unlike the advices and please Loghain and I have tried to make him think about."

She frowns, swishes the wine again like a nervous tic. "You're welcome, I guess. Just don't see what's the difference. He still goes to the frontline."

"Still, you have tried to make him see reason. You are an outsider, but you cared."

At this, Shepard stood up, the wine sloshing from her cup and dripping to her leggings, but she could not care less. "I have seen war, Commander," she said, calm and cold and furious, "_fought _in war, bigger and more terrible than this. We lost a lot. Many could have been saved had we presented a united front at the beginning, but it took homeworlds—no, not homelands, _homeworlds_—to be taken away before some of them saw reason and start working with each other." She started to pace, now. _Earth. Palaven. Thessia. Even Irune and Dekuuna. _"And I don't know how things are conducted in this land," she echoed him, "but I know enough that in monarchies, in kingdoms, about the only thing uniting the people is the king. And if we lost him, then we lose the stabilizing element of the people, and we might as well lose the damn war. I have seen crumbling worlds and lost battles. I don't wish that on anyone."

Great, now she needed a drink. She took a generous gulp before sitting down again. Her knuckles were white, fingers clutching the cup like a lifeline.

Duncan was watching her with hawk-like eyes. It was not obvious, but she could see how her little speech had affected him in the small ripples of murky wine in his own cup. He sighed. "You told me of this war before, but not like this."

"No," Shepard agreed, "not like this." She had marked the odds up, downplayed the losses, skimmed through the struggles. The bare essentials. No more than what she wanted to remember. This time was different. "What I told you two days ago were the facts. That just now was the truth."

He nodded. Shepard stood, ready to excuse herself.

"Shepard."

"Yes?"

"Two things, before you leave and prepare for tonight." Duncan pulled out a chain from under his tunic. Dangling from the chain were two identical keys. He took one and gave it to Shepard. "This is the key to that chest at the corner. In it are the treaties you brought to us. Hold on to the key, just in case.

"Yes, Commander."

He hesitated. "The second thing is about Alistair."

Shepard frowned. "Alistair?"

"Yes. I place him away from the thick of battle for a reason. Keep him alive, no matter what. Should Cailan fall, you must go to Redcliffe with him."

That made less and less sense, except that Alistair was right: Duncan was deliberately protecting him. "Redcliffe?"

"It is a city northwest from here. Alistair will know the way. It will not be easy, but take him there. Maker help us, it might be the only way to win this war if it comes to that."

"Alright. Does he know about this plan?"

Duncan actually looked guilty for a split-second. "It would be better that he does not, for now."

Shepard nodded, and left the Warden-Commander's tent.

* * *

It was supposed to be a simple mission: run up the tower and light the beacon to signal the flanking forces.

Shepard should have known that was never the case.

When they approached the tower, a guard and a mage greeted them with the news that yes, the Tower of Ishal was overrun with darkspawn and no, no one could help them clean the damn tower because everyone else was in the field.

So now, they were climbing the tower with painstaking speed because every step of the way, the ugly things would greet them. At least Alistair got the action he wanted. Duncan would not be pleased, but Shepard was not too worried. The kid actually packed some serious strength, and when needed, was an excellent team player. They fell into a pattern quite easily. After the tower guard made the mistake of entering a room and nearly got skewered by darkspawn using the doorway as a choke point, they reached an agreement that for every door in their way, Shepard would blast it open with a shockwave. Then they would wait for the darkspawn to come to them and turn the choke point in their advantage. Alistair took point, Shepard stabbed around when she could while also providing biotic support, and the tower guard protected the mage, who proved to be very useful with his incineration and cryo blasts, or whatever he called it.

"Loghain better be ready to charge as soon as we light the signal. The king is depending on us!" Alistair exclaimed in between swings and parries.

Shepard laughed humorlessly, side-stepping a darkspawn and slitting its throat open. "Maybe he shouldn't be in the frontlines, then. Should have stuck with practicing swings at radishes."

The guard just looked at them in horror. "That's the king you're talking about," he scolded.

Lift. Slam down. "A dumb one," Shepard replied.

"I have to agree with the Warden," said the mage. "It is reckless for him to endanger himself."

The guard sputtered in protests, but was soon busied by another wave of darkspawn.

They reached the top floor battered and bruised and cut, breathing hard. The stairs were old and stone and steep, and climbing it was not something Shepard would want a repeat of—especially if they had to battle darkspawn while doing so.

Shepard looked at the pile of firewood waiting to be lit, then at the mage. "You do it?"

"Yes, I can—"

Rumbling footsteps halted his words. Darkspawn came storming in the chamber, and leading them was a huge lumbering monster that vaguely reminded Shepard of a yahg, only with less eyes, or something else, something that she remembered in passing.

"Ogre!" yelled Alistair in warning.

An ogre. Not a yahg. The way it charged with brutality and abandon, however, she could almost believe that it was a yahg or a brute. She was not sure which creature she would prefer. None, she supposed—all were ugly and tough as nails. She rolled to her side—an instinctive move—before realizing that she did not have cover here. Nor did she have a loaded Claymore shotgun to blow the ogre's head off.

She was most definitely screwed.

"Mage!" she bellowed. "Try to fry its head for me, will you?"

The answer was a bolt of lightning, catching the ogre and enveloping it in a burst of light. For a moment, it seemed like it worked. The next, it returned growling and charging, and very much angrier. It lunged towards the mage, and he tried to dodge.

Not fast enough.

It grabbed the mage, holding his body in its big, clawed hand, and then _squeezed_.

Shepard looked around the room. Utter chaos; Alistair and the guard had felled a significant number of the darkspawn foot soldier, but the ogre was still there and they had lost their only ranged attacker. Their only chance—her only chance—was by tackling it head-on.

* * *

"_So," Shepard said, "what do I do?"_

"_When you lift or throw your enemies with biotics, you do it without gentleness, with no calm," Samara started, serene as she stood still with her in the shuttle bay. They had about six hours before they hit Omega, and Shepard had roped the justicar in to help her learn new biotic tricks._

_Shepard frowned. "I'm supposed to kill them, not be gentle with them."_

"_You are right," Samara agreed, inclining her head a bit, "but you need to be gentle with yourself. The technique is the same. The finesse is not." She demonstrated it then, wrapping dark energy around her own figure and then glided like an asari goddess._

"_Alright," said Shepard. "Let's try."_

* * *

Deep breath. Calm. Think the starboard observation deck, with the abyss of space facing her, enveloping her. Shepard channeled her energy through the nodes in her body, coating herself in the blue glow of biotics. Then, she lifted.

She floated for in the middle of the room, and for a moment she gained a tactical view of the situation. The guard was overwhelmed, but holding. Alistair was in his element, hacking and slashing and parrying and Shepard knew he would survive.

The moment passed, and Shepard focused her energy again, this time to launch her like a bullet towards the ogre's head, her blade drawn. The ogre turned in time, and Shepard aimed to stab its eye and—

—she missed.

Her dagger made a long slash across the ogre's face and it howled, mad, and then his fist was clutching her torso too and there was no time. She struggled, hand inching towards the small of her back—the ogre's hand in the way, it was hard—and after an agonizing second she pulled out her Predator.

Her hand was at an awkward angle and she knew the recoil would sprain her wrist. She aimed—point-blank and easy—and shot the ogre in the eye.

The spurt of blood was something worth watching, if only she did not feel pain all over her body.

She dropped to her knees, the ogre's body collapsing behind her. The tower guard was hurt badly, she noticed, but he lived. Alistair was battling two darkspawns at the same time in the far corner—the only one left.

"The beacon!" she yelled to the guard and he fumbled with his pocket before he hobbled towards the firewood, spark rocks in his hand. His hands were shaking but he managed to make a spark and it caught the wood, and then the fire was lit.

It was over. Mission accomplished, and she saw that Alistair had finished the last darkspawns.

A pain shot up her and she turned to the archway leading to the stairwell and she saw reinforcements with an archer grinning up to her, all yellow teeth, its crossbow unloaded. Shepard looked down and the feathered end of a crossbow bolt stuck out her side. It looked out of place and wrong and she had an odd urge to laugh.

When she collapsed—face-to-face with the dead ogre—she thought of a marble statue in Donovan Hock's vault.

* * *

"_You are crazy," Garrus accused as they limped back to the shuttle._

"_Crazy? No. Out of ammo? Yes," Shepard retorted._

_Tali giggled a little bit deliriously—Shepard suspected she was high on antibiotics—as she nursed the suit rupture on her waist. "I think," she said, voice echoing through her mask, "it was pretty awesome."_

"_Tali, she just killed a brute by charging towards it and biotic punching it. Repeatedly." said Garrus dryly._

"_Like I said. Awesome."_

_Liara looked up from her omni-tool and turned to them. "I think you worry too much, Garrus. She did win a hand-to-hand with a yahg before."_

"_And the Shadow Broker was _smarter_," Shepard added. "I really had to stretch my flexibility that one time."_

_Garrus growled._

_Shepard winked._

"Keelah_, get a room."_

* * *

"You are crazy," said a voice—too female and too human—as Shepard gained consciousness and sat up.

She turned towards the source of the voice. Morrigan. Somehow, Shepard was in Flemeth's hut, _again_, while her last memory was an ogre and a bolt through her gut. Maybe that was all a dream? Maybe she never actually left the hut and be a Grey Warden and climb up a darkspawn-infested tower at the whim of a stupid king. "Funny," said Shepard as she rubbed sleep off her eyes, "people tend to say that."

"I am not surprised."

"Why am I here, Morrigan?" She looked around the hut and noticed another person in the next bed out cold—Alistair, her mind supplied. The other Grey Warden that came with her to light the beacon. "Why are we here?"

Morrigan snorted. "Mother rescued you from the tower. You collapsed after you killed an ogre by tackling it head-on. He fell after trying to protect you."

"This a hobby of hers, rescuing people?" She wondered fleetingly how in the world Flemeth managed the rescue, but decided she did not want to know. As an afterthought, Shepard added, "And pretty sure it was the crossbow that did me in. The ogre was quite civil, all things considered."

"I do not understand why mother would rescue someone who stubbornly tries to kill herself."

"Maybe she has more brilliant ideas. Like making me fight the Blight on my own." The Blight. Darkspawn. Ogres that looked a lot like a certain statue in a vault in Bekenstein. "The battle…?"

"Lost. That Loghain ordered his men to retreat."

"_What?_"

"Is the concept of betrayal a foreign one to you?"

A weight sunk somewhere in her and she remembered a dead turian Spectre killed by another with silvery skin and cybernetic jaw, pipes and metal, and she remembered a gun pointed to her as the summery wind of Virmire ruffled her hair. "No." She swallowed. "I just hoped I wouldn't have to go through it again." Her hand went to her neck, an attempt to erase the lingering feeling of a turian's talons against her pulse. "How many survived?"

Morrigan's gaze was pointed. "Two."

* * *

The first time Shepard navigated the Korcari Wilds, she believed she had done so in terrible company, considering Morrigan was clearly not the best conversationalist in Ferelden.

The second time Shepard navigated the Korcari Wilds, she realized that Morrigan's unaffected nature was much, much preferable to the hanging cloud of gloom that followed them in Alistair's wake. By no means was Shepard blaming Alistair for this—he had, after all, just lost each and every one of his Warden comrades, including Duncan who probably was something like a father to him—but it did not mean the journey was any less pleasant.

Grief was easier to deal with, in the Normandy, mainly because everyone had a job to fill, work to do, and so the crew grieved by busying themselves. Sometimes, a crew member might be too shaken to work—this happened once when a tech heard of her entire family being taken by the Collectors—and she would allow said crew member to grieve for one day before they had to return to duty. The worst was probably Liara, after Thessia's fall. The asari had holed herself in her little Broker den for a couple of days, but she was unfit for ground mission anyway with the injuries she got in the Temple of Athame. Shepard found out later that those few days had been extremely productive, as shown by the reports of mysterious movements of resources and intel tips.

This, however, was not the Normandy. There was no privacy to be had if you travel in a three-person team by foot. Nor was there much to do except to let your feet do the job and your mind to wander elsewhere. Between a sulking taciturn mage with mommy issues and a soldier grieving for his squad, Shepard almost wished something attacked them just so her two travelling companions—and fine, maybe she, too—could release the pent-up whatever it is they had right now.

She still had not told them about Duncan's last orders to her. Not that it mattered. Morrigan suggested they went to Lothering to stock up on supplies, and after Shepard consulted the map she had agreed, provided they made a stop by Ostagar to collect the traties. They did need supplies, and from Lothering they could just follow the bank of Lake Calenhad to reach Redcliffe. She would just tell her about Redcliffe after they were all set and rested in Lothering. With any luck, her fellow Warden would already feel a little better by then.

For now, though… Shepard had to endure.

She had stopped trying to make sense of their route hours ago. Now she was just distracting herself by the scenery as Morrigan led them between trees and around bodies of water. She noticed that the witch was picking flowers—white with a red center, just like the one she picked for the poisoned war hound. "Morrigan, why are you collecting the herb?"

The woman seemed amused with this question. "What other purpose does an herb have? Surely you do not suggest I pick the flowers because I find them pretty."

"Looking at the way you just toss them into that pouch, nah. But I thought it's used to cure darkspawn blood poisoning. You don't look like you're poisoned."

Morrigan smiled faintly. "'Tis not as powerful a cure as 'tis a protection. Consumed regularly, the brew prevents the taint from corrupting one into a ghoul. As I am no Grey Warden, I require this if I were to survive our quest."

"Oh." It had not even occurred to Shepard that Morrigan might be inflicted with darkspawn poisoning sometime in the future. Somehow, she still half-expected her to turn into a crow again and left the two of them to their own devices, instead of staying with them as a permanent member of their little team. "Do you need help?"

"You may, if you wish. 'Tis not necessary, though. I have collected enough in the days your Templar boy was sleeping."

"I'm a Grey Warden, not a Templar, _apostate_," ground Alistair.

"Oh! Has the foolish Templar ceased his crying to lecture us with the virtues of the Chantry again? How delightful."

And Shepard thought the silence was bad. Thedas just loved to prove her wrong, did it not? She opened her mouth to tell the both of them to shut up, but then she felt it: a feeling, a tug in her pulse. The thrum of the taint in her veins intensified. She raised her fist, halting her companions.

"Alistair."

"Yeah, I can sense them."

Shepard frowned. "Four…?" She was not sure. She could feel their presence closing in, but it was still hard to pinpoint each creature out.

"Six. Closing in fast."

They drew their weapons, readied their stance. As soon as the first darkspawn appeared in their sight, its head was promptly blasted off by a well-timed fireball. The other five charged forward. Shepard threw a shockwave, throwing the vanguards off-course and staggering the one archer in the back, its arrow prematurely released and instead hitting one of its own. Alistair closed in the one wounded by the friendly arrow, while Morrigan sent bolts of light to the three other creatures, chipping their strength little by little.

Shepard side-stepped from between trees around their little conflict, bringing herself closer and closer to the archer's flank. One strong stab through the gap between its armor collar and helmet brought it down, and—

—nearly brushing her thigh, in a swift graceful leap punctuated with a sharp bark, a huge dog threw itself to a darkspawn, tackled its stout armored figure to the ground, and viciously ripped the creature's face off. Then the dog jumped and bit the ankle of another one, distracting it enough so Shepard could stab the darkspawn with both her daggers.

"Got the last one," called Alistair right when she pulled her daggers out the stinking corpse, and just like that it was over.

The dog—no, not just a dog, she belatedly realized, a _Mabari war hound_—circled her legs once before sitting in front of her, face tilted upwards inquisitively.

"Huh. I think that's the one you helped, Shepard," said Alistair with a half-smile.

Oh. It _was _the one she helped. Shepard grinned. "Hey there, boy. Good work with those things."

It wagged its tail.

She could barely hold herself from cooing. She forced herself to look away to prevent the baby-talk from escaping her and instead looked at Morrigan's half-bewildered, half-disgusted face. "Guess you were wrong, Morrigan."

"What do you mean?"

"There are three survivors, not two. Alistair," she pointed at him, "me," at herself, "and Urz."

Morrigan rolled her eyes. "Urgh. Do as you wish with it, Shepard, just keep it from drooling all over my pack."

"Pfffft. C'mon, Urz. Let's go leave the mean lady behind."

Alistair snorted. Urz barked in affirmation. Morrigan rolled her eyes again.

And they pushed on through the Wilds.

* * *

.

**A/N:** Holy hells, 72 followers? I... I... thank you. For reading. It makes me happy. And guilty, for being slow with the updates. But mostly happy. By the way, frozendude, yes the line "stick them with the pointy end" was a reference to Game of Thrones. I love GoT and ASOIAF to bits, I can't help it. To Blackholelord (and anyone else who might be wondering), I plan to end this with just Origins, although who knows, right? This is still in the beginning as it is. Tell me what you think, as always!

p.s. anyone wants to beta this? Job description includes Nazi-ing the hell out of my English-as-a-second-language grammar, as well as helping me keep the story in check. Curbing unecessary parts, and the likes. If not, that's okay too. I still love y'all.


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